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The “Community” star and host of “The Soup” will be making his debut as the master of ceremonies of the Film Independent Spirit Awards telecast in February, and sharing the secrets of his expected success with PopcornBiz.

McHale will follow an intense mental and physical training regimen in the months before he takes the stage: “I will begin my 'Rocky IV'-like workouts where I will go up to Northern Siberia and I will just move huge logs, stay in a log cabin – it's going to be great."

A good awards show host requires highly specialized skills: “You have to be able to read a teleprompter – that's essential. My German teleprompter reading still sucks, so I don't know if I'll be hosting one in Germany soon. You definitely have to have a sense of smell, because it is on the beach and you never know what will come at you. You definitely have to have a suit, I believe. They'll probably require one. No shoes, though. The beach, no shoes - so there is a chance, an exciting chance of electrocution.”

McHale will familiarize himself with the ceremony’s sponsors – in this case, particularly Jameson Irish Whiskey: “I hope it's not a gift bag. I hope it's just a jug. I’ll be building up my tolerance, definitely. It's like getting ready for tailgating. It's like getting ready for the Superbowl. Yeah, I will be well liquored-up.”

McHale isn’t above cheap, crowd-pleasing stunts, such as the possibility of getting his host-y nemesis Ryan Seacrest to join him onstage: “I don't think they could afford to get him on stage because he's now up to like $2 million every fifteen minutes to host stuff. Hopefully I can drag him out there. That would probably be how it would have to happen, I'd have to drag him. He's got snipers that will take me out at any moment.”

And all appearances to the contrary, McHale takes indie film seriously: “Independent film is the lifeblood of Hollywood, I think. It drives studio films. Independent films get noticed because of their stories and because of the performances, and not because of the enormous marketing machines behind them. So that's how these films do well and survive and are seen. They are noteworthy because of how good they are. I know the studios pay attention to these things, and it's what informs what will be made, I think. They're the lab. They're where the experiments happen, because you can't do that with big films. They don't allow it to happen as much. So performances like James Franco's in ‘127 Hours’ and things like that are the things that make people come out to movies. They're essential.”